MIDDLE AGE RAGE: . . .and Other Male Indignities

The woes and furies of waning glories are here humorously laid out with all their ironies as Shoenberg, a businessman suffering through the pangs of senescence, tries to save himself and us with a few jokes, incisive observations, and pure wackiness. In the first chapter, ""Groan Up,"" Shoenberg sets the stage--he got up one morning and his back didn't work. It's downhill from there as he tells us about all the other things that don't function, or function only now and then but never when you want them to. Diet, children, exercise, sex, fantasies, stress: a dreary litany of the aging process made bearable because of the author's wit and goofiness. The pathetic becomes laughable as men struggle with their hair, waterworks, hypochondria. ""Middle age, if not treated properly, could kill you,"" we are told. That's the virtue of this book--as one's arches fall and pyorrhea reigns, one can at least learn to laugh in the process. Middle age may kill, but with this book you'll die laughing. The accompanying cartoons and graphs are an added delight.